


Never Say Forever

by ZeeCatfish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:56:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeeCatfish/pseuds/ZeeCatfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>:Flagsh11p [Condescension’s Glory] has set c0urse t0 planet [Alternia]. Fastest r0ute 11s be11ng calculated. Fastest r0ute calculated. Assum11ng standard parameters apply t0 set c0urse the j0urney t0 planet [Alternia] w11ll take appr0x11mately 1025 sweeps 4 per11gees 13 days 12 h0urs 11 m11nutes 2 sec0nds:</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Say Forever

They never really speak with one another in so many words. When she enters his helmsblock it’s not because she wants conversation but because she wants someone to listen without being able to use her words against her. If it were an answer she wanted she knows that all she has to do is look over to the display to see thousands of sweeps worth of commentary directed at her. 

His world, a world observed through log processing, an ancient audio feed and the grainy video supplied by the cameras in his block and on the bridge, is at her fingertips. Like a master puppeteer she has him dancing a whirling tango with stars, moons and planets that burn to ashes on her whims, knowing he silently prays for an end to the senseless destruction, the crusade she leads nowhere and for no-one but herself.

Not even the poor quality of his visual perception can take away of her majestic though terrifying beauty as she walks into his helmsblock, head lifted high despite the immense weight her horns must have. Her hair trails behind her like an inky cloak, curls bouncing in a draft his body long since ceased to be able to register making it appear almost alive.

“Helmsman,” she starts, voice steady and regal as always. A walkway rises from the mass of bio-engineered networking tentacles that cover the room and she walks up to him, placing her hands on the sides of his face. He feels nothing. There are approximately 9,531 programs he is running in the current timeframe, there is no space to focus on accessing his hull’s sensory feed. The knowledge that there would be nothing on there regardless would make him sick if he was still able to be so. Instead it just makes him feel empty.

Resp0nse: y0ur awful h11ghness f11shl11ps the tyrant  
Query: what can 11 help y0u w11th t0n11ght  
Query: bl0w11ng up planets f11nd11ng new c11v11l11sat110ns t0 shred t0 b11ts 0r just generally mak11ng the p0pulace m11serable just say the w0rd

The display goes ignored as always. He knows the Condesce is aware it exists. She must be, the ship was made on her orders, including the helmsblock. He doesn’t know whether or not having a display is standard procedure, he isn’t allowed inside the standard helmsblock blueprints, probably because he might get ideas.

A lock of hair falls in her face and she looks visibly annoyed. For a moment he thinks she might actually rip it off, but then she tucks it behind her fin and the face of the empress reappears, hiding the ugly troll he saw for the first time during those few moments. He’s had nothing but time to observe her in her unchanging, immortal routine, and he can’t help but log down that she looks different today, more frazzled, maybe even upset.

He feels something run through his systems and processes an error message, which he files away along with the rest of the error messages that are not error messages but simply labeled feelings, too complicated for the base system embedded in the tentacle clusters infused with his psyche.

She presses a soft, gentle kiss to his forehead. He is reminded of another he saw doing the same thing so incredibly long ago, an adult reassuring her charge that everything would be alright while he watched on the sidelines, getting ready for another sermon. Another error report is filed, and he labels it anger148201422253, shoving it in his records while bitterly processing the thought that he’ll never be able to do more than that no matter how often she crushes him into little pieces.

“Helmsman, my dear Helmsman,” she speaks again, pressing their foreheads together. Her voice is woven with theatric tragedy and he knows many would be swayed by her little performance alone. He isn’t. His audio feeds exist to take in commands, not to analyse and recognise the tones used and more than anything he knows his soul has already been wrung dry of sympathy.

Appeal: st0p t0uch11ng me  
C0mment: there 11s n0 p011nt 11 cant feel 11t anyway wh0 are y0u try11ng t0 c0nv11nce act11ng l11ke a m011ra11l

“I need you to take me back,” she pleads, stroking the sides of his face almost pityingly. Sometimes he wonders if her pity for him is real, and how mad someone has to be to tie one’s loved one up and use them as a machine, other times he almost manages to convince himself that she believes her endless demand for him, the way she keeps him alive is an act of mercy, that she genuinely does not know that all he yearns for is death.

Query: back t0 where 11s there s0mewhere 11n th11s un11verse y0ur presence has n0t devastated en0ugh yet

With a mere thought he finds the relevant archived logs and within less than a second he’d processed them all. The matching process is uncomplicated, only complicated by the sheer size of his databases. The trail of death and destruction following the flagship of the fleet makes his query easier, matching the hits of locations that they had been but had left intact took only moments. There was only one hit.

Query: Altern11a

“Take me back home, love,” she whispers, voice lowered enough to give his audio feeds trouble catching the words. Whether it is on purpose or simply a part of an act played out by a troll oblivious to the fact that her conversation’s aural glands have long ago eroded he doesn’t know. He doesn’t really want to, but he logs the question in his status report regardless. She’ll glance over it later, possibly be amused, probably not paying enough attention to be even that.

:Flagsh11p [Condescension’s Glory] has set c0urse t0 planet [Alternia]. Fastest r0ute 11s be11ng calculated. Fastest r0ute calculated. Assum11ng standard parameters apply t0 set c0urse the j0urney t0 planet [Alternia] w11ll take appr0x11mately 1025 sweeps 4 per11gees 13 days 12 h0urs 11 m11nutes 2 sec0nds:

Query: why n0w why d0 y0u need t0 g0 back

Alternia is home to beautiful memories, to hopes and dreams and everything the empress t0uches ends in flames or worse. Five new error report alerts appear on his main feed and he puts them in the folder labeled fear. Fear124154323, Fear124154324, Fear124154325, Fear124154326, Fear124154327. Fear is not something he encounters often, not since shortly after being enfolded in his private hell of networking biomass. Anger, hatred, bitterness, those are common to him. Sometimes there is pity, when he realises no one knows the empress like he does, but those thoughts never do anything but make him hate her even more. There is no need for fear, not when one has so little to lose as he does.

But Alternia is sacred, the one place he can’t stand to see in flames and he fears -Fear124154328, Fear124154329, Fear124154330- that the sanity, the consciousness he’s managed to hold on to by telling himself that as long as he lives to remember the Signless’ dreams she will never succeed in entirely eradicating them, will evaporate. To become just a machine, to lose his opinions and his dreams -Fear124154331, Fear124154332- just like he’s already lost his free will and his senses makes him dread the knowledge that -Fear124154333- he might be living on forever even more than he already did.

She strokes his hair, mindful not to touch his goggles or the tentacle pugged into his spinal chord. It must be terribly greasy, he thinks. He hasn’t bathed in centuries. :3472 sweeps 3 per11gees 24 days 13 h0urs 34 m11nutes 12 sec0nds: his archives supply, and he’s not sure whether it’s the physical grossness implied or the knowledge that that is the amount of time he’s spent here, in the helmsblock that makes the ‘uncomfortable’ error reports stack up. “There is something wrong, love. Something on Alternia is terribly wrong and none of those horribly lazy peasants serving me knows why our home planet has vanished from the radar. You’ll be a dear and get me there, won’t you?”

Query: van11shed what d0 y0u mean van11shed  
C0mment: planets d0nt just van11sh unless y0u s11nk y0ur gnarled claws 11nt0 them  
C0mment: just because y0ur h11ghbl00d pets d0nt kn0w the11r waste chute encas11ng seat11ng t11ssue fr0m the11r upper and l0wer arm junct110n11ng p011nt d0esnt mean altern11a just van11shed

Then something new happens. After placing another tender kiss on his forehead, and then another on his lips -anger148201422262, anger148201422263, anger148201422264- she turns to the display and actually reads his comment, sneering condescendingly. “They are incompetent fools darling, but I already knew that. And please stop using such uncouth vocabulary.”

Query: y0u kn0w what 11 d11dnt kn0w  
Statement: that y0u c0uld fuck11ng read 11mag11ne my surpr11se her majesty 0f awfulness actually kn0ws h0w t0 understand the wr11tten w0rd w11th0ut s0me terr11f11ed bluebl00d w11ggler read11ng sh11t 0ut t0 her

She laughs, absentmindedly stroking his cheek. “Oh sweetheart, how you tease me. You know well enough I’m far too busy to listen to whatever your little brain cooks up on a regular basis.”

Statement: b0y d0 11 feel spec11al n0w

“You should,” she muses. “No one else can say they are the moirail of the empress herself. 

Query: when d11d th11s bec0me a th11ng because 11 d0nt remember s11gn11ng anyth11ng

Once again she merely laughs as if he said something hilarious before swatting his cheek softly. He doesn’t feel a thing. “Don’t be silly love. Who would even consider turning me down? Now then, be a dear and tell me how long it takes until we reach home.”

Query: can’t you just scroll up

:Flagsh11p [Condescension’s Glory] has set c0urse t0 planet [Alternia]. Fastest r0ute calculated. Assum11ng standard parameters apply t0 set c0urse the j0urney t0 planet [Alternia] w11ll take appr0x11mately 1025 sweeps 2 per11gees 13 days 12 h0urs 9 m11nutes 54 sec0nds:

Resp0nse: and 11 assure y0u 11f y0u ever b0thered ask11ng me 0ut 11 w0uld turn y0u d0wn 11n a heartbeat 

She frowns. “That’s too long. Fly faster Ψiioniic.”  
Ψiioniic. The name given to him upon reaching adulthood, branding him with her mark forever. When he’d stood behind the Signless it was a silent reminder, a way of telling himself and others that the way the world was back then they would never be equal, that those like him would never be a person to those enslaved by the system because that sign denoted them as tools to further the cause of the empire and nothing more. Now he’d thought the name had become lost in time, something everyone knew but no-one bothered to pay enough attention to to remember. Ψiioniics were only Ψiioniics until they became Helmsmen after all. To be called that again seemed unnecessarily cruel, a forceful reminder that an object who was once a man can never go back to being a man no matter what name he is called by.

:Flagsh11p [Condescension’s Glory] has accellerated 11ts c0urse t0 planet [Alternia]. Fastest r0ute 11s be11ng calculated tak11ng 11nt0 acc0unt a change 11n standard parameters. Fastest r0ute calculated. Result 0f the calculat110ns based 0n the new parameters tell that the j0urney t0 planet [Alternia] w11ll take appr0x11mately 993 sweeps 4 per11gees 11 days 20 h0urs 9 m11nutes 24 sec0nds:

“That’s hardly a difference!” she snaps. The amount of processes he runs at the current timeframe ups to 11,235 as the ship accelerates and shifts into a mode more suitable for long distance traveling. He gets in several warnings on how long the crew will be able to survive on current nutritional supplies. It isn’t anywhere near enough. The Condesce isn’t done shouting yet. “Fly as fast as you can, Helmsman!”

:C0mmand c0nf11rmed. 0verr11d11ng standard pr0t0c0ls t0 acc0m0date t0 request. Sh11ft11ng pr110r11t11es t0 all0w max11mum m0vement speed:

The amount of processes ran at the current timeframe increases t0 13,218 and then to 14,831 before his calculations get scrambled by a sudden influx of distress signals as searing hot pain overtakes him, running through a hull he didn’t even believe could still register sensation. Warnings and alerts flood his datafeed faster than even he can process. The Condesce says something else and he logs it down but he’ll have to look at it later because there is not enough system memory to process anything not flagged as priority at the current point in time.

:Flagsh11p [Condescension’s Glory] has accellerated 11ts c0urse t0 planet [Alternia]. Fastest r0ute 11s be11ng calculated tak11ng 11nt0 acc0unt a change 11n standard parameters. Warning. current parameters v110late bas11c safety pr0t0c0ls. Precaut110ns aga11nst severe repercuss110ns such as 11njury 0r death sh0uld be taken. Fastest r0ute calculated. Result 0f the calculat110ns based 0n the new parameters tell that the j0urney t0 planet [Alternia] w11ll take appr0x11mately 612 sweeps 0 per11gees 0 days 0 h0urs 0 m11nutes 0 sec0nds:

Once the initial boost has set the ship into motion nothing will be able to change it’s speed or course without interference from the Helmsman. According to calculations there are currently [0] obstacles on the calculated route.

There is music. The Helmsman is blind and deaf and dead in all but mind but something about the music resonates through his entire body and suddenly he is really sure he is really and truly hearing this, not through his audio feed but through his non functioning hull which is burning with so much pain he isn’t able to stand it. One by one his processes shut down and he starts up troubleshooting because obviously something went wrong.  
Troubleshooting doesn’t react. Everything is silent. Not even the music can be heard anymore.

His body feels weird and overstimulated, but he realises it might not be pain. The datafeed is silent, his archives empty. His systems are dead. He opens his eyes and looks around, feeling oddly calm despite a little voice in the back of his head telling him he should be panicking, that something horrible must have happened.

The buzz of bees and the rustling of leaves break the silence, and the scent of honey drifts towards him. He is sitting in a little clearing with a few large boulders where the Signless had once practiced sermons for him long ago. He’d laughed then, because the Signless was short and tended to mumble. It was sweeps later he would speak loud and clear to large masses, convincing them they could change the world together. 

He is the only one there, he is certain. He can feel his ocular spheres leak, but he doesn’t bother to wipe the liquid away. The sensations overwhelm him, and he lays back, relishing in the feeling of the grass ticking his arms and neck, the solid ground below his back.

The single chain linking him to her has broken. He is dead.

**Author's Note:**

> A thing I wrote sometime last week in the hope it would end my writers block. Sadly, it didn't.


End file.
